Jennifer in Red and Blue

I wanted to create a monochromatic portrait to test out my new Terry Ludwig pastels but my subject for the painting, Jennifer, has very deep dark red hair so the only color that I could conceivably use was red. I tried to keep it more realistic in terms of skin tone so I used some of my warmer grays trying not to overuse the more vibrant reds. It was going well but near the end of the painting I realized an element was missing. I tested a number of colors and wiped them away until I found that this dark blue to countered the dark red perfectly. The nice part of pastels, I feel, is that I can always add a little extra color variation to any scene without a huge amount of production.

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